


Repair

by coraxes



Series: Author's Favorites [8]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Bad Jokes, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Season/Series 02, Pregnancy, established trevor/sypha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:10:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: For months life went on as Adrian expected: Trevor and Sypha off having adventures while he made peace with his family's ghosts.  Fortunately for him, Trevor and Sypha aren't quite as accepting of his new life plan as he thought.  At least in part because they don't know what they're doing.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> As you can tell from the tags this fic deals with pregnancy. CW if you're sensitive to that, but I don't go into graphic detail.

Adrian killed his father at the end of summer, when the air was beginning to turn crisp at night but the sun still beat down on corpses during the day.  Trevor and Sypha stayed for a short time after—making plans, making eyes, waiting for their wounds to heal.  They offered to help with repairs, too.  Trevor was useless, Sypha slightly less so.  Between the three of them they managed to make a ladder leading down to the Belmont library, which only Trevor needed anyway.

The castle was much emptier once they left.  It shouldn’t have made sense, but Adrian’s whole family had lived there once; it had felt full then, too.

His next visitors came three weeks later, after Adrian had repaired the front doors and reinforced the library floors and ceiling.  He checked the windows and saw—well, there weren’t enough of them to be called a mob.  But the group of travelers banging on his front doors had the right attitude for it.  One was even holding a pitchfork.

Projecting his voice was simple enough.  “I’m not taking visitors,” he told them, and then added, “kindly fuck off.” 

They did, after a few more hours of attempting to break down his door. 

Time dragged on.  With no one to answer to and no need to leave—Dracula’s kitchens were enchanted to bring in food, as well as the occasional live animal when Adrian needed blood—he stopped keeping track.  Instead he measured time in repairs completed and projects finished.  ( _Make something,_ Trevor had told him, but before Adrian could do that he needed to fix what he already had.)

Shortly after Adrian finished cleaning out the north tower workshops, Trevor and Sypha came back.  They stomped in the door.  Their boots left snow on his doorstep.  Adrian stared.  When had it begun snowing?

“Alucard,” said Sypha, “tell Trevor he’s being an idiot.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, Alucard calls me an idiot all the time,” said Trevor, voice hoarse, and immediately dissolved into a coughing fit.

They stayed for just over a week while Adrian shoved potions down Trevor’s throat.  Then he left to go trail some unfortunate unicorn, and Sypha stayed for another three days, apparently just to use Adrian’s shower.  She called it “the magic rain” even after Adrian told her its actual name.  He was pretty sure that was on purpose.  Then she left again, and the castle descended once again into silence.

His next few visitors were less exciting.  Another mob, this time led by a village priest, which Adrian ignored.  A child, apparently on a dare—for that one Adrian opened the door and offered to make her tea; she threw a rock at him and ran.  One lone vampire, either very stupid or very confused; either way Adrian left her very dead.

In the meantime, he finished repairing the rooms where he and his father once fought.  He threw out the rug where Sypha had burned Dracula’s body, and put his father’s wedding ring in his bedside table.  Adrian shut his parents’ suite and began cleaning out the east tower’s spacious guest rooms and spare kitchen.

By the time Trevor came to the castle again, the trees were beginning to regrow their leaves and the snow had nearly finished melting.  “Where is Sypha?” Adrian asked as he pulled open the door.

“Fuck you,” said Trevor, knocking his shoulder into Adrian’s companionably.  He smelled—different.  Adrian couldn’t place how.  It had been too long.  “I’m delightful on my own.  But Sypha’s a few villages over, doing some secret Speaker shit.  I wasn’t invited, thought I’d see what you’d done to my family library.”

“ _My_ family library, now,” Adrian said, just to argue.  He spent too much time concocting arguments in his own head these days.  Most of the time he even won.  It was a relief to do it with another person.

“I’m still invested,” said Trevor.  “Show me what you’ve done with the place, yeah?”

Adrian did, and the rest of the castle too, and along the way he realized that Trevor smelled different because he smelled like Sypha. 

It wasn’t as if he was surprised.  Since their first trip to the Belmont library, when Adrian heard Trevor and Sypha off laughing among themselves while he stared into a broken mirror, Adrian thought something like this might happen.  But he was—he cared.  More than he expected to. 

(Well, of course he cared.  When Adrian wasn’t wallowing in mindless grief he was thinking about Trevor and Sypha, worrying at the thought of them like a dog with a bone.  Stupid of him, really, when they obviously didn’t mind leaving him here alone.)

Trevor stayed a few days and then left with a promise to see Adrian again soon, but Adrian had finished cleaning all the junk out of the east tower by the time he heard the knock at the door. 

_Tap-ta-ta-tap-tap, tap-tap._

On the way down the stairs, Adrian glanced out a window, really taking in the scenery for the first time in days.  The sun was bright outside; the trees were covered in thick, cheerful green.  Summer, then.  How had it become summer again without him noticing?

_TAP-TA-TA-TAP-TAP, TAP-TAP._

Adrian had a reasonable guess as to who was making shave-and-a-haircut reverberate down his halls.  He hurried down the staircase, but only because he didn’t want Trevor breaking down the front doors.  Or perhaps Sypha.  She wasn’t often impatient, but you could never tell.

By the time he reached the entrance hall, he could hear their voices leaking through the wood.

“—ow!”  Adrian sighed.  Yes, that was Trevor.

“I’m not _delicate,_ Trevor—” And Sypha.  He hadn’t seen her in—what was it?  Six months?  It was more of a relief than he wanted to admit, hearing her voice.  He found himself grinning.

“I was trying to be polite!” 

Lovely, they were fighting.  Adrian forced the grin off his face and pulled open the door.  “Are you so impatient,” he began.  And then stopped.  Adrian tried not to stare at Sypha and Trevor, because if he didn’t try he’d just embarrass himself.  He meant to show them to the library or the infirmary or whatever else they needed this time.  But his perfunctory glance snagged on Sypha.  “Oh.”

Sypha crossed her arms over her extremely pregnant stomach and lifted her nose in the air.  “Don’t make this weird, Alucard.  Can we come in?”

“Of course,” he said, stepping hastily to the side.

Besides the—obvious, they hadn’t much changed.  Trevor smelled less like cheap ale than he had the first time Adrian had met him; he seemed to have cut the Belmont crest from his last tunic and sewn it on to a new one.  Sypha had ditched her pale, heavy robes for something darker and with less fabric.  Without her Speaker clothing she looked even smaller; it made her pregnancy seem to stand out more.

Out of their sight, Adrian clutched onto one of the door’s ridged carvings.  He found he rather needed the support.

“’Of course,’” said Trevor, following Sypha in.  His hand came to rest on the back of her neck. “Why doesn’t Alucard get an elbow to the ribs for being polite?”

Teasing, Adrian could deal with.  He took a deep breath and refocused on Trevor’s bright, stupid smirk before letting the door swing shut.  “Is this the result of a spell?”  Even if they _were_ —surely they wouldn’t have done this, not so quickly.

“No,” said Sypha, at the same time Trevor said, “In a manner of speaking.”  Sypha brandished her elbow menacingly; Trevor sidestepped out of her range.

Adrian tried to keep himself from grimacing.  He had seen them, after all, watched them giggling together from the first part of their journey, the way they were joined at the hip by the time they’d killed his father.  Humans had short lives, his father had told him many times, and as such they were prone to doing rash things.  Like having children after knowing one another for only a few months. 

…Though in hindsight that was, perhaps, self-deprecation. 

“Oh, God,” Adrian muttered.  “Is everything going well?  Do you need anything?”

Sypha rubbed the back of her head.  Her eyes were fucking enormous, Adrian noticed for about the fourteenth time.  Reminded him of—not kittens.  Horses, maybe.  Big placid-looking things that kicked like hell.  “We-ell.  There have been no complications, but I’m starting my third trimester.  I don’t want to spend it hunting demons.”

Six months?  She was only six months along?  She looked like a balloon waiting to pop.  Adrian was so busy processing that, it took him a moment to understand her implication.  “You want to stay here for the birth?”

She shrugged.  “And for the first few months of the child’s life, if you don’t mind.”

“We can’t keep travelling.  She’s been puking so fucking much, Alucard, it’s ridiculous.  And anyway, you’re parked right by my old house, might as well bring the family here,” Trevor said.  He clapped his hand on Adrian’s shoulder, grinning broadly.  There was an inexplicable blush high on his cheeks.  “Hope you don’t mind.”

Well, the castle certainly had space, Adrian thought as he grabbed Trevor’s wrist.  After a moment of squeezing Trevor released his grip on Adrian’s shoulder.  And there was probably more medical knowledge in one of his father’s library shelves than the rest of the world combined.

Once there had been a family in this castle; perhaps it was time for another, if only to chase out all the ghosts.

“It seems I have no choice,” said Adrian, and added, “I shall find a room for you somewhere,” as if he had cleaned out the east tower and chosen to stay in one of its rooms with no particular reason in mind.  Trevor wiggled his fingers and Adrian realized he was still holding onto the man’s wrist.  He very gently leveraged that to make Trevor hit himself in the face.

“Never mind, you know what, Sypha, let’s go,” Trevor said.

Sypha snorted with laughter but otherwise ignored him.  She stood on her toes—nimble as ever, it seemed—and pushed Adrian’s hair out of the way to kiss him on the cheek.  “Excellent.  Thank you, Alucard!” she trilled in his ear, and Adrian thanked whatever god was listening that he was unable to blush.

 “Of course,” he said, and bit his tongue before he could do something stupid like add on _dear._ Sypha waggled her eyebrows, looking over his shoulder at Trevor. 

“Yeah, Alucard, thanks,” said Trevor.  A stubbly jaw scratched along Adrian’s face as Trevor kissed his other cheek.  Adrian jerked away.  Trevor smirked back.  It was probably his idea of payback, but there was something unsettlingly predatory in those ice-white eyes of his. 

Fuck.  He should put them on the other side of the castle.  He should give them two sleeping bags and let them set up in the Belmont library/monster mausoleum. 

“I’ll show you to the east tower,” he said instead, regaining what little cool composure he had left.  Adrian’s face was on fire, but he refused to press his hands to his cheeks like a lovestruck maiden.  “There’s an enchanted kitchen there, Sypha—I don’t know if you’ve been having cravings.”

Sypha groaned.  “Oh, _have_ I.”  She darted forward and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. 

“And, ah, just so we’re clear,” said Trevor, falling into step on Sypha’s other side, “the baby’s mine, I’m the father, I don’t think we actually said that.”

God.  Adrian didn’t know why Sypha kept the Belmont around, or why he did for that matter.  “ _Some_ of us understand subtext,” he said.

Trevor stuck out his middle finger.  Without looking Sypha made a circle with her forefinger and thumb and impaled it.

“Nice,” said Trevor.

Adrian sighed.

The east tower was a bit of a trek.  As a child Adrian had used this to his advantage, hiding there after a spat with one of his parents.  He could use magic to force his way into the rooms and spend hours digging up forgotten books and trinkets.  No one had lived there when he was a boy, though it seemed some of Dracula’s generals had taken up residence during the war.  When he moved in, the tower had been both undamaged and mostly free of the painful memories that struck as Adrian repaired the main areas of the castle.

While they walked up the richly carpeted stairs, Sypha and Trevor told him about their travels.  Monsters slaughtered, villagers saved, mobs avoided, bishops pantsed.  After so long with so few to talk to, Adrian wasn’t sure how to jump in, so he mostly listened as their voices echoed off the stone walls. 

Finally they reached the fifth floor, where their suite sat down the hall from Adrian’s.  Trevor stuck his head in the door and whistled.  “Well, that’s much cozier than a campsite,” he said.  “Where’s the lantern?”

“No need.”  Adrian flicked the light switch. 

Sypha’s hand on his arm twitched, though she had seen this before.  “Oh, I always forget.  And the sh—the magic rain!  You have that all over the place, right?”

“The bathroom is through that door,” Adrian said, tilting his head towards it.  “Do try not to fall in the toilet.”  Condescension, at least, naturally filled his conversational gaps. 

Sypha elbowed him.  He shot her a glare and she blinked back innocently.  “Trevor, why don’t you settle in—I’ve got to see this magical kitchen.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that myself,” Trevor began.  Sypha looked at him, unsubtly glanced at Adrian, and then looked back at Trevor again. 

Alright, Adrian thought.  What the fuck was going on?  Expecting a child could put all sorts of strain on a relationship, but the last thing he needed was to find himself in the middle of a couple’s spat between these two.  He liked to think of himself as a principled man, but—of all the situations he could take advantage of. 

“But I can see that later,” Trevor said hastily.  “I’ve missed those magic chamber pots.”

Then again, they didn’t seem to be fighting.

Perhaps they were just trying to keep him in the dark.  About what, though?

“Good,” said Sypha.  “Now.  Does your kitchen make hot chocolate?  And bell peppers?  I have been wanting some for _weeks._ ”

It did, of course.  The kitchen yanked their food from who-knew-where—hopefully not directly from some peasant’s stovetop—so Adrian could pull together just about everything.  Sometimes he felt guilty about this, as his mother had, but considering he had murdered his father to prevent an apocalypse recently Adrian felt he had a bit of leeway.  

He coaxed the fridge into providing a vibrant red bell pepper.  Sypha bit into it like an apple.  “What?” she said at his raised eyebrow.  “You _drink blood._   Now, what about hot chocolate?”

“How did you come by such expensive taste?” Adrian muttered.

 “I don’t know.  I’ve only had it once, when I was a girl, but it’s been all I can think about for the last week or so.”  She patted her stomach.  “ _They_ ’re the one with expensive taste, not me.”

“They?” Adrian asked, frowning.  He paused with the milk jug tilted over a saucepan.  “Are you expecting more than one?”

Sypha shook her head, face settling into something mulish as if gearing up for an argument.  “They are a Speaker child, and Speaker children are called _they_ until we figure out what they are.”  For emphasis, she took another bite of pepper, right into the seed-filled core.  Sypha’s eyes didn’t even water.  In terms of intimidation tactics, she was doing remarkably well.

“Oh,” he said, blinking.  “That must make naming a challenge.”

“We don’t name them until after the first year, anyway,” said Sypha.  “They’ll change it if they want.  I wasn’t called Sypha until I was five.”

“What were you before?”  He spooned out cocoa powder and sugar into the pot of milk and raised the heat on the stove.

“Squeaky.”  Adrian choked.  “My voice used to be very high-pitched, and I was always following the older Speakers around to ask questions.  So they called me Squeaky until I picked Sypha instead.  Don’t laugh, I can still do magic like this, you know!”

Instead of setting him on fire, however, she lowered herself onto a chair, letting out a relieved breath when she landed and rubbing the small of her back. 

“Do you want help or—or anything?” Adrian said weakly.  He had been around pregnant women a few times before when he stayed with his mother, but not nearly enough to prepare for this. 

“Ugh, don’t start.  Trevor’s bad enough.  Just bring me hot chocolate.”

“Yes, your highness.”

Sypha threw the pepper’s stem at him, striking right at the base of his skull.

After a few moments the hot chocolate was done; he set one mug in front of Sypha and fixed another for himself before joining her at the small table.  Sypha took a moment to inhale the fumes, then inhaled half the cup in one gulp.  “Perfect!  Thank you, that is perfect.  You must show me how to make it later.”

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” said Adrian.

Sypha shot him a sheepish grin.  “Probably more like the middle of the night tonight, the way things have been going.”  Her foot bumped against his shin underneath the table.  “Really, though, thank you for taking us.  And if we ever—if we make you uncomfortable, Adrian, you must tell us.”

Adrian blinked.  They had never called him by that name.  Frankly, he was surprised she still remembered it.

“We can find another place to stay,” Sypha finished, and watched him, unblinking, over the rim of her cup.  Adrian was staring; it took him a moment to realize she wanted a response.

Uncomfortable—was that the word for how he felt around Trevor and Sypha?  Certainly he couldn’t say he was relaxed, most of the time.  Awareness of them prickled at him constantly, buzzed under his skin.  They occupied too many of his thoughts when absent; when they were present, Adrian could think of little else.  But their presence was nonetheless reassuring.  Adrian wanted them to stay where he could find them, hear their breathing and chatter and heartbeats like they were on the road again. 

Especially now that he knew about Sypha.  Adrian had seen his mother attend to too many patients to be unaware of the risks pregnancy brought.

No; they were better off here. 

“I’ll try to tolerate you both,” Adrian said, smiling a little.  “We are hardly lacking for space.  If you annoy me too badly, I’ll just move to another wing.”

Sypha smiled back.  “You might need to, to escape Trevor’s snoring.”  As if she weren’t the only snorer in their merry band.  “Where are you now?  I don’t suppose your room was so far out of the way.”

“It wasn’t, but I’m just down the hall,” he said. 

Sypha brightened and did not ask questions about why he was not staying in his old room, which Adrian immensely appreciated.  “Well, that makes things easier,” she said. 

Adrian wouldn’t have thought anything of it had she not turned pink.


	2. Two

The light overhead hummed and sputtered to life.  It didn’t really make the storeroom much brighter, only threw shadows at stranger angles.  Still, it was better than nothing.

“Jesus, Alucard,” said Trevor, and Adrian resisted making the obvious joke.  “How do you have so much  _junk_?”

Adrian ducked past Trevor and Sypha into the storeroom, stepping over a pile of old clothes.  He could have sworn he’d thrown an old bassinette into the back corner.  “Have you seen your own ancestral library?  At least my storerooms aren’t filled with corpses.”

Not  _anymore,_ anyway.

“At least there’s only one Belmont library,” countered Trevor.  “We’ve been through threeof these already.”

“Four,” said Sypha.  Her voice was muffled, as if she’d already buried herself in the stacks.  “You missed one while you were making lunch.”

Meals had been the first change to Adrian’s routine in the few days since Trevor and Sypha moved in.  He’d never been one to lose track of time and accidentally starve himself; Adrian had spent too many years worrying over his vampire half for that.  But while alone he had developed the habit of grazing from the kitchen whenever he was hungry, even if that was in the middle of the night.  With Trevor and Sypha around, things had gotten a lot more regular.

They even surprised him by being decent cooks.  Sypha knew or made up dozens of variations on the same few recipes, and Trevor had mastered the art of throwing a lot of things into a pot to simmer for three hours.  (Neither of his parents had been much for cooking.  Adrian had gone through a phase as a bored teenager where he made whatever old and occasionally disgusting recipes he found in the library; that was the extent of his knowledge.) 

The second change to his routine was, of course, the amount of time now spent looking for baby stuff.  

He narrowly avoided tripping over a large book in a language he didn’t recognize and finally reached the back corner.   _There_ was the bassinette, with its smooth metal and moth-eaten cushions.  A few of the bars were bent, but otherwise it was in good shape.  “Found it.”

“Fucking finally,” said Trevor.  “Sypha, you still alive?”

“No, Alucard’s garbage ate me.  Run, save yourselves.”

Trevor ducked his head, barely holding back a smile.  “The nugget’s going to be such a shithead,” he said dreamily, following Adrian’s path through the piles of junk.

“The nugget?”  Adrian raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you know, the—” Trevor made a series of odd hand motions and finally settled on, “the baby.  I’ve gotta call it _something._ ”

Adrian didn’t snort, because snorting was undignified.  “I can’t decide if that’s better or worse than Squeaky.”

“Definitely better.”  He tripped over the large book and caught himself with a hand on Adrian’s shoulder, turning the gesture into some sort of odd macho back-slap.  And then he left his hand on Adrian’s shoulder, _again._

He kept doing that.  Trevor and Sypha both kept touching him.  But there was something calculating about the way Trevor did it; or perhaps Adrian was just overthinking things.

“This was yours, then?” Trevor asked.  He ran his hand over the decorative twirls of metal on the sides, then along the imprint of tiny, inhumanly strong fingers on one of the bars.  “No sharp edges.  It’ll do.”

“You’re welcome,” said Adrian, though the lack of sentimentality in Trevor’s assessment was a relief. 

Of course, then Trevor had to ask, “Did your father make this?”

“I don’t believe so.”  Adrian took a deep breath and nodded at a box of stuffed toys, shoved to the side.  They’d been consigned here from his childhood bedroom long ago, too much of a mess to even be displayed—Adrian had been, apparently, a rambunctious child.  “He did make those.  Some of them, at least.”

“Really?” Trevor blinked, peering at the box.  “Wouldn’t have thought of Dracula as a stuffed-horse sort of guy.”

The toy was actually a zebra, but few people on this continent knew that they even existed.  “He could be,” said Adrian.

They still didn’t know about the last few minutes with his father.  That Dracula had let himself be killed.  That Adrian still replayed the last few moments in his head, his father’s emaciated remains walking toward him, hands outstretched.  Had he been attacking, or just trying to embrace his son one last time?  Which had Adrian been more afraid of?

Trevor’s thumb traced a short arc along his shoulder.  Adrian started, and found Trevor studying him with narrowed eyes. 

“We’d best carry this out, then,” Adrian said hastily, stepping neatly out of Trevor’s grip.  “Or…I’ll do that.  If you see anything else you’d like for the child—”

“—Nugget—”

“—then take it.  And I’m not calling your baby _Nugget._ ”  With that he hoisted the bassinet overhead, wrinkling his nose at the ensuing shower of dust, and began to weave once more through the towers of junk.

Sypha’s fluffy head emerged from between two such stacks.  “When you’re done, come over here!  I found some more baby things, but I need help sorting them.”

Adrian sighed and did as he was told.  Sypha had made a hollow among all the boxes and he joined her in it.  When Trevor joined them a few minutes later the space felt crowded, but not unpleasantly so.  For a few minutes they worked in relative silence, holding up baby clothes for approval and inspection—it was surreal for Adrian, but thankfully he didn’t remember most of the clothes anyway.  And since he wouldn’t be making further use of them himself, it was entirely practical.

Still.

As they opened up the second box, Sypha said with an air of studied nonchalance, “Have I told you about what Trevor said when he found out I was pregnant?”

Trevor shot her a look.  “Oh, here we go.”  He scooted away from Sypha, which of course brought him even closer to Adrian.  “You didn’t seem happy about it, alright!”

Sypha’s voice dipped into a decent attempt at a lower register and a poor imitation of Trevor’s accent.  “’Can your speaker magic take care of this or should I go bribe an apothecary?’, he asked me.”

Adrian blinked.  “ _Really_ , Belmont?”  Trevor not wanting children wasn’t surprising, considering his general…everything.  But _really_?

He’d seemed so…smug about the whole situation.

“That was where my mind was going,” Sypha admitted.

Trevor pointed at her.  “ _Ha._ So I was right.”

She ignored this.  “And _then_.”

“Oh no,” said Trevor.

“When I told him a few days later that I wanted to keep it…” Sypha leaned closer to Adrian; her voice dropped to a whisper.  “He _cried._ ”

“Oh shut _up,_ ” Trevor whined.  “You shouldn’t make fun of me.  I’ve been told I’m a very sad man.”

Sypha’s hand dropped down to Trevor’s; their fingers curled naturally around each other.  Such an unremarkable gesture and yet Adrian found himself fixated.  They weren’t, he noticed, wearing rings.  “Not anymore, I hope,” said Sypha.

Adrian pushed himself to his feet.  “If you need me,” he said, fumbling for an excuse, “I’ll be—back later.”  Then he took what remained of his composure and made a hasty exit.

* * *

The problem, Adrian decided, was that he hadn’t had a hunt in a while.

He didn’t need blood often, only every few weeks or so.  But there was blood and there was _blood._ Eating from a tame pig, summoned by magic, was different from chasing down his prey.  Adrian didn’t particularly like that part of himself, but he also knew that disliking it was pointless.  As much as vampirism could be natural, enjoying the violence and fear was his nature.

Maybe if he sated that part of him, the rest would relax.

So Adrian successfully avoided Trevor and Sypha for the rest of the day, and when night had truly fallen he slipped outside.

He stopped just outside the doors and frowned.  The air was warm and heavy like a blanket; a slight breeze stirred his hair, and Adrian shoved it behind his ears.  How long had it been since he had gone outside?  Not just to open the door—really left the castle.  He couldn’t remember.

Vampires were often recluses.  Dracula had gone decades without stirring from his home.  But Adrian was only half-vampire, and he didn’t want to be much like his father.

He shook his head, slipped into his wolf shape, and stalked off into the woods.

The hunt didn’t take too long.  He found a herd of deer and singled out one from the back, chasing it through the woods until he got bored and decided to end it.  Mother had never liked that he played with his food in that way, he remembered.  Father had encouraged it. 

Afterwards, Adrian wiped the last of the blood from his mouth and slung the carcass over his shoulders.  No sense in wasting good meat.  He trekked back to the castle and hung the deer up in the cooler.  Adrian didn’t care for butchering, and besides, he felt filthy.  The clothes he wore for the occasion were already old and stained, but still.  As he made his way up the east tower stairs Adrian pulled at his shirt collar, nose wrinkling when it stuck to his skin.

“Holy _shit,_ Alucard, what happened to you?” asked Trevor, poking his head out the sitting room doorway as Adrian passed.  Adrian started.  Then Trevor blinked and give him a dry look, the kind he always made when he was about to amuse himself.  His eyes flicked up and down Alucard, focusing on where the bloodstains concentrated around his neck and shoulders. “Or what did you happen to, I suppose I should ask.”

“Dinner.  A deer, in case you were worried,” Adrian drawled, because this was a _Belmont_ he was talking to.  He liked to hope Trevor had gotten over his distrust—he’d certainly expressed fewer worries since they had killed his father—but you could never know, with him.  Trevor was so rarely serious.

Case in point: “As long as it wasn’t a deer I know,” said Trevor.

“What are you doing up this late, anyway?” Adrian said.  He peered past Trevor into the sitting room, and Trevor took a step back.  There were pillows and blankets piled on the couch, and a book lying open on the floor beside it.  “Did Sypha kick you out?”

“Not on purpose,” said Trevor.

Ah.  Adrian smirked despite himself.  “Snoring?”

“It echoes off the walls,” Trevor agreed with a grimace.  “Besides, what were _you_ doing, hunting this late?  I know sunlight isn’t a problem for you.”

Adrian considered.

Trevor kicked very gently at Adrian’s ankle.  “C’mon, now.  If you don’t want to tell me the truth, a smartass comment works too.”

He was awful.  “I don’t like being a literal bloody mess,” said Adrian.  “Especially in front of—you two.”

Trevor leaned forward and swiped his finger along Adrian’s jaw.  “It’s not a bad look for you,” he said.

“What—”

“You had—” Trevor held up the digit, now smeared with blood.  “It’s just sort of smeared now.  And you don’t look any better.  I didn’t think this through.  Shit.”

Adrian grinned.  “Do you _ever_ think things through, Belmont?”

“Oh, shut it.”  Trevor reached out to wipe his hand off on Adrian’s shirt; absolutely without thinking it through, Adrian grabbed his wrist and _licked._ Trevor choked.  Adrian froze, and very deliberately released him.

 _Say something stupid,_ he thought desperately.  _Say something so stupid that I have an excuse to kill you and never think of this again._

For once, Trevor did not say something stupid.  Just cleared his throat and looked away.  “Go clean up, then, you fucking…aristocrat.”  Adrian was still too thrown to comment on either Trevor’s hypocrisy or use of four-syllable words. 

No matter; he was much more comfortable with insults, anyway.  “Go to sleep, you fucking reprobate.  There are other beds in this castle, you know—have you considered using one of them?”

“Why, are you offering?”

“Oh, God, no,” said Adrian reflexively.  What an awful idea, for several reasons.

Trevor pouted.  “I’ve been told I made an excellent bedmate.”

“By whom, the family goat?”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Trevor, shoving at Adrian’s chest.  If there was any strength behind it, Adrian couldn’t tell; he smirked back.  Trevor turned faintly pink.  He’d been doing that a lot lately.  “Go jump in a lava pit.”

Adrian rolled his eyes.  He meant to turn away—Trevor had, after all, given him a perfect opportunity—but he couldn’t convince himself to move.  Trevor didn’t, either.  Instead he remained uncharacteristically quiet as Adrian gathered his thoughts. 

This was too odd.  Trevor and Sypha both were being odd.  He was pretty sure Trevor had just flirted with him, _twice._ “I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said after a moment.

“We don’t really know what we’re doing, either,” Trevor admitted.  “But I want to try something.  So don’t fucking bite me.”

“Ominous,” said Adrian.

Trevor leaned forward, eyes narrowing.  “I mean it,” he said, and then kissed him.

Adrian had thought a lot about kissing Trevor.  This was not something he would ever admit, of course, but Belmont wasn’t hard to look at.  And—fuck. The first time they met Adrian had ended up pinning Trevor to the ground, fangs practically at his throat.  He was a vampire; bloodlust wasn’t far from the regular kind.  He’d replayed that particular scenario over in his mind, thought about what would happen if he’d gone for a bite or a kiss then.  Or what if he’d grabbed Trevor’s shirtfront later in their journeys and efficiently shut that dirty mouth.

In Adrian’s daydreams—sometimes regular dreams—Trevor had always been antagonistic if not violent.  All hard angles and scratchy stubble and scraping fingernails.  Sometimes a blade or two.

The reality was much different.

Trevor kissed him careful and closemouthed, one of his big hands pushing Adrian’s hair out of the way.  He was warm even though two layers of clothes and the air between them; his breath tickled and his nose pushed at an awkward angle against Adrian’s.  Adrian’s eyes fell shut and he pressed forward before he could think better of it.  The moment stretched out into molasses, slow and sweet.

Trevor’s tongue found one of Adrian’s fangs just as he realized what they were doing.

“Wait,” he said, and pulled away, breathing too heavily.  There were several reasons why this was a bad idea, and Adrian settled on, “Sypha?”

Trevor shrugged.  “She’ll be mad I beat her to you.”

“ _What_?”  They weren’t—this couldn’t be a competition.  Trevor might have some sort of fucked-up competition around this, but Sypha definitely wouldn’t, he told himself.  So it couldn’t be that.

“Go to bed, Alucard,” Trevor said, not unkindly.  “For God-knows-what reason, I like you.  We both do.  We’ll figure out the rest in the morning.  And brush your teeth, for God’s sake.”

“Fuck you,” said Adrian, and immediately felt better when Trevor laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if I like this, but I've been writing and rewriting scenes for uhhhh almost a month so I thought you guys were due an update. As always, comments and kudos are extremely appreciated. The response to the first chapter absolutely blew me away--honestly, I usually just shit out and post whatever comes to mind first on WIPs. But everyone was so sweet that I felt like I had to take my time and get it RIGHT, goddammit. Hope this was worth the wait.
> 
> Anyway find me on tumblr @thiefofeddis or on pillowfort @coraxes! There's a Castlevania comm!


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh....happy new year?
> 
> apologies if this isn't edited very well, I wrote like 3k words in the last two days and posted before I could lose my nerve. hope you enjoy anyway!

Adrian spent the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling, convincing himself not to storm into Trevor and Sypha’s bedroom and demand answers.  His imagination got sidetracked into a few fantasies he’d been trying to repress over the last…well, nearly since they met, but even more so since they’d returned to the castle.  Then he ran out of imagination and started worrying again.

When grey sunlight began trickling through the windows, it was a relief.  Adrian rolled out of bed, brushed his teeth one more time, and made his way down to the kitchen.  Maybe if he were as loud as possible making breakfast, they’d get up sooner.  And if not, he would have a distraction from his own thoughts.

Sypha came in as he was making tea.  Adrian managed not to jerk to attention like an overeager puppy at the sound of her footsteps, but it was a close thing.  In lieu of a greeting she leaned her forehead against his back, warm through the thin fabric of his undershirt. “Trevor said we should talk.”

Adrian paused.  “What _exactly_ did he say?”

“He shook me awake to tell me that ‘our vampire needs to talk to you,’ and then he wouldn’t tell me anything else until I left.  If I didn’t feel bad for making him leave last night I would have frozen him to the bed.”  She added, a little desperately, “Tea?”

Oh, that asshole _._ Trevor couldn’t have even told the _mother_ of his _child_ that they had kissed?  He wondered if it would be better or worse for Sypha to be holding a mug of hot tea for this.  Would he prefer a fireball or near-boiling water to be thrown at him, should the conversation end badly?

Adrian wasn’t sure how flammable he was, so he turned around and passed Sypha the mug he’d been fixing for himself.  He had to hold back a snicker; her hair was always a disaster first thing in the morning.

“So?” Sypha prompted.

Wait a moment.  “‘Our vampire’?”

Sypha’s expression stayed neutral, but her blush gave her away.  “Was he wrong?”

“ _Half-_ vampire,” Adrian said.  Perhaps this wouldn’t go too badly after all.  “The rest is…well, I suppose that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.  Trevor seemed—I was under the impression that you—that is—”

“ _Adrian,_ ” said Sypha. 

“Trevor kissed me last night.”  He reached for some sort of quip or deflection, but couldn’t manage to find one.

Sypha stared at him, processing, and then rolled her eyes.  “Of course he did.  Well, did you like it?”

Of all the reactions Adrian had expected, positive and negative, that had not been one.  “Yes,” he said immediately.  Sypha snorted.  “But I was worried about you.  And him.  I wasn’t—you know I haven’t been trying to seduce him.”

“That’s too bad, because we’ve been trying to seduce _you._ Or, at least, trying to see if you wanted to be seduced.  If you’d—” She abruptly closed her mouth and set her tea down on the nearest free patch of counter. 

Adrian had learned the signs of Sypha’s nausea by now, so he grabbed a basin from under the cabinet; Sypha snatched it from his hands.  After a moment, she relaxed. 

“That was very sexy, I feel like, me almost throwing up,” she said solemnly, and set the basin to the side.  “Are you seduced yet?”

Adrian grinned.  And the hell of it was, the whole thing was _endearing._ These last few weeks he’d enjoyed feeling like part of Trevor and Sypha’s growing family, helping them find baby clothes and childproof the castle.  Being on-hand to witness morning sickness was just part of that.  Sort of gross, but most things about babies were gross.  Finally he said, “I’ve been seduced since I met you two.”  Interest had never been the problem.

“Both of us?  Not just Trevor?” Sypha said.  Vulnerability flashed in her voice for just a moment, pulling Adrian up short.

They really didn’t know what they were doing.  They might have talked about this, but neither Trevor nor Sypha could read his mind any more than he could read theirs. 

Instead of answering, Adrian tugged her closer with his hand on her elbow and leaned down.  Sypha met him halfway, looping her arms around his shoulders.  Between the height difference and the baby bump, finding a good angle was impossible; their lips had barely met before they pulled back, giggling.  Then Adrian lifted Sypha up onto the counter.

“Ooh, much better,” she said, eyes brightening, and tugged him back in for a much more successful kiss.

Before they could progress too far, though, there was a voice from the doorway.  “Should I be offended?” Trevor asked, and Adrian jerked back.  “Also, the porridge is burning.”

“ _Shit._ ” Adrian ignored Trevor’s laugh as he attempted to salvage breakfast.

“So I take it the talk went well then,” said Trevor.

“I think so,” said Sypha, “although you could have given me _some_ warning. Treffy.”

It shouldn’t have meant anything—just a stupid nickname, one Adrian had heard Sypha throw out a handful of times before when she was especially annoyed. They couldn’t know how he’d felt when he first heard it, searching for a way to kill his father in his childhood home while Trevor and Sypha got along together. It was the first time he’d truly realized that despite their bickering—maybe because of it—they cared for one another in an easy way that didn’t extend to him.

Adrian spoke up over Trevor’s defenses. “I do have a few questions. First of all, if you’ve wanted to be—involved—with me for so long, why did you leave for months?” The porridge was a loss. He set the pot down near the sink and heard the metal crack—too hard, dammit, he needed to get a better hold on himself. “ _Shit._ ”

“Well,” Sypha began, and then Adrian heard a muffled _thud_ downstairs.

He held up his hand. “Did you hear that?”

God, he’d forgotten to bar the front doors last night, hadn’t he?

“Really? That’s the best excuse you’ve got?” asked Trevor.

 _“Are you—is anyone here? Please, I need help!”_ The voice was faint even to him, probably too low for anyone else to pick up.

A frustrated growl dug its way out of his throat. Of all the times—well, at least it wasn’t an angry mob. But from the sound of it, this wasn’t something Adrian should ignore, either.

“Someone just came through the front doors,” he said, and finally turned to Trevor and Sypha, who were watching him with a mixture of annoyance and concern. Adrian let out a breath; he _had_ been happy, just a moment ago. Excited, even. But he didn’t know where they meant for him to fit into their lives. If this was just a whim—if they changed their minds and left again—Adrian didn’t know if he could bear it. He’d already lost one family. “I need to take a look.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Trevor said with a stubborn set to his jaw.

Adrian nodded, and ran down the tower to the front doors.

The intruder was a woman in a rough homespun dress, with mouse-brown hair spilling from its bun. The rough bandage over her forearm didn’t conceal the smell of fresh blood. She stood only a few steps from the door, eyes scanning the entry, and didn’t appear to be armed. When Adrian appeared, she stepped forward.

“You’re the one they call Alucard?” she asked with a small frown. Her eyes darted over him, the wrinkled trousers and the lumpy socks he’d pulled on when he got out of bed.

Adrian drew himself up with as much dignity as he could muster. The woman’s eyes were red-rimmed, he noticed, but there were no tracks of tears down her face—as if she wanted to cry but hadn’t let herself do it yet. “I am.”

“Please, I—there was an attack, the other day, on our farmhouse. I thought we made off alright but now Magda won’t leave the barn. She barricaded herself in last night.”

Adrian blinked. He was sympathetic, but he hardly understood why she’d come to _him_ for aid about it when the only contact he’d had with the local village were angry mobs and one brave little girl. “What makes you think I could help?”

“Shit, I should’ve said.” The woman squeezed at her bandaged arm. “The attackers were vampires. Magda’s turned, and she _won’t let me help her._ ”

Distantly he heard Sypha and Trevor running down behind him. “I see,” said Adrian. Vampires he could deal with. “Let me get a few things, and then we can go to your farm. Alright?”

The woman took a shaky breath and nodded.

\--

The trek to the farmhouse was only a few miles, a short enough distance that it wasn’t worth the effort of piling all of them into the rickety cart. Adrian made the mistake of looking too long at Sypha as they were leaving. “What?” she said hotly. “Just because I’m pregnant, you think I can’t fight a few vampires?”

The thought _had_ occurred to him, but Trevor was already snickering, so of course Adrian couldn’t admit that. “I’m sure you’re still perfectly capable,” he assured her. It wasn’t her abilities that worried him so much as the obvious vulnerability she presented, but Sypha knew how to protect herself.

“You won’t be fighting Magda,” the woman, Roza, said firmly, clenching her fists. She glared at Adrian’s sword, Trevor’s whip. Then her shell cracked and she added, “Will you? It’ll still be her, won’t it? _You_ don’t seem like a monster.”

“Wait ‘til you catch him without his morning tea,” said Trevor cheerfully. Adrian fantasized briefly about pushing him into a ditch.

“Not the fucking _time,_ Belmont,” murmured Adrian, instead of adding that he hadn’t had any yet. He hesitated over Roza’s response; she’d tensed even further at the name _Belmont,_ and Adrian mentally swore at himself for the misstep. They were right by the old family estate, after all. She didn’t seem to have a problem with him now, but who knew where she’d been when the Belmonts had been killed and excommunicated over a decade ago? “While vampirism has its unique challenges, she should be essentially the same person. But if there are other vampires attacking people in the area, we’ll need to deal with them.”

Roza nodded tightly.

“How did you manage to throw them off, anyway?” he asked, nodding at her wound. “They obviously came quite close.”

“Costel—my little one—hit the one on Magda with a branding iron. Our bull gored the other. Guess they didn’t want to stick around after that.”

Adrian snorted, and didn’t pry about her own injury.

“Is Magda your daughter?” Sypha asked.

Roza barked out a laugh and shook her head. “No. We were friends when we were girls. Our husbands both passed a few years back. She needed more help around the farm, I needed a place for Costel and me. So we’ve lived together for a while.”

“Oh! You were married to the butcher,” Trevor said, glancing back. He’d startled himself so much with the realization that he stumbled over a stone, and swore under his breath as he righted himself. “I’d say sorry he’s dead, but last I saw him he was burning down my house, so.”

“You really are one of the Belmonts, then. Don’t worry about it. Andru was an asshole.” Roza frowned, tilting her head. “The village has changed since the church fell on your family. I don’t know if you’ve been by yet, but…lots of folks didn’t agree with what happened.”

“Good for them.” Adrian looked up at Trevor’s tone and saw the tense line of his shoulders. All the people who had watched his mother burn were probably dead; he couldn’t imagine meeting one. Adrian grabbed Trevor’s hand and gave a brief, sharp squeeze. Trevor shot him a surprised look, but didn’t protest.

They walked the rest of the way in uneasy silence.

Roza and Magda’s farm appeared through the trees soon enough, a few acres of flat pasture surrounding a small barn and smaller house. Two small children, a boy and a girl, darted out to meet them as they approached. The boy threw himself into Roza’s arms, but the girl stood aside with her arms crossed.

“Any change?” Roza asked.

The girl shook her head. “I tried to get in, but the door won’t move and she yelled at me to go away.” She scanned over the rest of them; her eyes widened as she looked at Adrian.

He couldn’t help but smirk a little in response. “Hello again,” he said. “Do try to restrain yourself from throwing rocks at me this time.”

“ _Miri,_ ” said Roza sharply.

“That sounds like a good story, but we should probably start talking to your friend now,” Sypha pointed out.

Roza nodded to herself. “Right,” she said, and hammered on the barn door. “Magda, it’s me!”

_“Leave me alone!”_

“Stop being a stubborn old cow!” Roza screamed back, and kicked the door. Sypha and Trevor both snorted with laughter, though Sypha tried to disguise hers as a cough. “You’re not gonna hurt me, Mags, so—”

 _“I already did!”_ Magda’s voice broke on the last word and Roza grimaced. “Just—take the kids and what you can and _go,_ Rozalia. Your brother’ll take you—”

Roza pulled a face. “She’s not thinking straight,” she muttered to Adrian. “Can you just—talk to her? Tell her what’s coming, get her to see sense?”

Adrian nodded. He saw an open window at the side of the barn, fifteen feet above the ground and apparently unbarred; the smell of animal blood wafted from it, and he wrinkled his nose. “Alright, we’ll be out in a moment,” he said, and propelled himself upwards.

(“Will Mama be able to do that?” he heard Miri gasp, and bit back another smirk.)

The window led onto a hayloft. Adrian pulled himself onto it and looked over the edge, keeping his moments silent as he tried to find Magda.

He saw the carcass first—a chicken, its neck so savaged it was nearly decapitated. It had been dropped in a far corner away from the door. A few more chickens clucked softly in their pen, but the other stalls were empty; perhaps Magda had only planned for a few meals. It wasn’t bad thinking for a little fledgling vampire.

The barricade of old barrels and bales of feed blocking the door was slightly less clearheaded, of course.

Magda herself was more difficult to find, but eventually Adrian noticed the lump of dark fabric and pale hair tucked into one corner, well out of the range of slanting sunbeams. She had her arms curled around her knees and her head down. When Adrian listened, he could hear her breathing but no heartbeat.

“Magda?” he said, voice echoing in the still barn, and she jumped, looking wildly around.

“Who’s there? How did you get in here?”

“My name is Adrian, but you might know me better as Alucard,” he said. Slow understanding dawned on her face. Adrian let his legs dangle from the hayloft, not getting down just yet. “Roza told me what had happened.”

Magda rubbed her eyes. “’Course she did. Well, you can leave, because I’m not coming out.”

“Seems unreasonable. Your family is going to need the barn.” Adrian didn’t know much about farming, but barns, he was certain, were essential.

“They need me to not fucking eat them,” snapped Magda.

Adrian shrugged, taking her point. Would bringing up his own parents help? His father had never hurt his mother, but perhaps the genocide he committed in her name would outweigh that. “I know what you’re going through is…difficult,” he said slowly, “but for what it’s worth, I’ve been this way all my life and never killed someone through feeding on them. After a few days, blood will feel like any other appetite.”

It wasn’t quite true, but the rest would serve only to alarm her at this point. He could tell her the rest once she’d calmed down.

“So I’ll just _want_ to eat my family? As if that’s so much better.” She scrubbed at the back of her bloodstained mouth with one hand, and looked at her fingers in disgust.

“Better than being dead,” said Adrian. He dropped from the hayloft and killed a chicken, then handed it to her. “You need a lot of blood after being turned, or so I’ve heard. Surely one wasn’t enough.”

Magda glared at him and then at the offered meal. Then she snatched it from his hand and sunk her fangs in. It wasn’t pretty—feeding never was, and she hadn’t had much practice. But it was over soon. She threw the carcass to the side and slumped back against the wall; already a little color had appeared in her cheeks. “What if they don’t want me around? Sure, Roza’s worried now. But I know the stories. I can’t go out in the sun with the children anymore. I won’t be any help to her in the day. We won’t be able to grow old together. What sort of family will that make us?”

Adrian frowned and sat down beside her on the dusty barn floor. His mother had never seemed to mind that Dracula couldn’t accompany them on day trips. They’d talked about her turning, but she liked her grey hairs, said her wrinkles made her look wise.   

He didn’t know when he would stop aging. Maybe someday he would stay young even as Trevor and Sypha and their child grew older. Maybe they wouldn’t notice for a while, if he stayed in the castle while they travelled the country hunting demons. Adrian’s scowl deepened at the idea. Perhaps he’d outlive all the people he cared about, but he couldn’t let them grow old out of his sight while he sat in his dusty old home and _waited—_

 “I don’t know. But you aren’t the only person who has a say in this. Perhaps you should let her in. Figure it out together.”

“You make it sound easy,” Magda muttered. “I can’t even walk across the floor anymore. Too much sun.”

“I’m sorry this happened to you, but your life isn’t over yet. And if you have any questions—or if it gets to be too much—I’m close by.” Adrian offered his hand. “Alright?”

Magda hesitated, then shook his hand briefly. “Alright.”

“I’ll take down the barricade, if you’d rather not chance it,” Adrian offered. She could probably run across the floor quickly enough to avoid the worst of it, but he’d rather not go through this trouble only to end up with a pile of ash.

“Please,” Magda said, and attempted to scrub her face clean with the hem of her dress while Adrian cleared the doors. It didn’t take too long; he had a lot of practice moving things. Finally he threw the doors open, and Roza rushed in.

He kept an eye on the women’s embrace long enough to ensure no one was getting bitten. Then he rejoined Trevor and Sypha.

Instead of triumphant he felt oddly shaken. Adrian’s hands were steady, but the ground seemed to be trembling under his feet. “Can you find the vampires who attacked here?” he asked before they could get a word in.

Sypha wiggled her fingers. Faint purple light trailed from her fingertips. “I rigged up a tracking spell. They aren’t too far from here. But Alucard—”

“Can you call me Adrian?” he said, and blinked. He hadn’t known he was going to make the request until it spilled out.

Trevor and Sypha glanced at one another. “Yeah, if you like,” said Trevor. “But—”

“Not right here,” Adrian said.

Trevor huffed an impatient sigh as they started down the path traced out by Sypha’s magic. It turned into an undignified yelp when Adrian smacked his ass; Sypha burst into startled laughter.

Once they were off the farmland, Sypha said, “We thought you wanted us to leave. You _told_ us you were staying at that castle, and when we came back—”

“You could have come with us, or asked us to stay, _Adrian_ ,” said Trevor. “We didn’t tell you to keep your distance.”

It was true, but Adrian still bristled. Shouldn’t they have known what it was like, seeing them together? “You didn’t have to tell me. You were off—canoodling—”

“ _Canoodling_?” Trevor muttered, and Adrian glared at him.

“You know what I mean. Why—you’re expecting a child, for God’s sake! How do I fit into that? As, what, a quick fuck whenever you feel like stopping by?”

“That’s not what we want and you know it, so stop being a brat,” Sypha snapped. She grabbed his elbow, bringing them to a halt. “Do you want us to apologize for loving each other, when you decided to hold yourself apart? I won’t. But we _missed_ you. It has always felt wrong to travel without you there. Trevor and I want this to be a family—all four of us. And I think that’s what you want too.”

Sypha glared at Trevor. Adrian couldn’t muster anything more than a stare; thankfully Trevor wasn’t doing much better either. “Yeah,” he said finally; he was blushing so hard it had spread down his neck. Adrian found himself staring at its progress. “What she said.”

“Well—” Adrian began. He scraped his insides for counterarguments, but found something different bubbling in his chest instead.

He thought about the possibility of other mornings like this. Outside the castle, tracking down vampires who were killing people and helping the confused fledglings they left behind. No longer trapped with his family’s ghosts.

“Yes, I do,” he admitted.

“Fucking _finally,”_ Trevor groaned. “C’mon, let’s go kill some vampires and then we’re not leaving the bedroom for a week.”

Adrian and Sypha’s eyes met as they were rolling them. But, hell, that didn’t sound so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are, as always, fantastic.
> 
> just one more chapter to wrap things up, and then this thing is done!


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just fluff. fluffy fluff. and mentions of sex, though nothing explicit. also fluff. it's very short, just wrapping things up.

After everything, the actual fight against the rogue vampires was anticlimactic. They had taken down Dracula and his generals, after all, the most powerful vampires in the world. What were two ordinary bandits against that?

“So,” Adrian began while the vampires’ dust settled on the ground, and Trevor swept him off his feet. Or kicked his feet out from under him. Either way Adrian ended up hovering over the ground, propped up more by magic than Trevor’s arms, with Trevor’s mouth against his.

It wasn’t good at first, between Adrian’s indignant sputtering and Trevor’s broad grin. But then Adrian dropped his sword and yanked at Trevor’s collar, and Trevor’s tongue pressed against his. Something warm and sturdy pressed against his back, steadying him enough that Adrian let go of his magic.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Trevor groaned against his mouth. It would have been sexier if he hadn’t immediately followed it up with, “You’re heavy.”

Adrian broke away to make sure Trevor could see him rolling his eyes. “What on earth possessed you to do _that_?” The question came out softer and fonder than he meant it to, but it was damned difficult to stay irritated looking at Trevor like _this_ , all bright blue eyes and messy hair and _yes,_ the scar. Not to mention Sypha resting her head on Trevor’s shoulder, watching the proceedings with interest.

Trevor shrugged. “You make a good damsel,” he said, and tugged on a fistful of Adrian’s hair for emphasis.

“If you’re trying to convince me to allow you on top, you’re doing an awful job,” Adrian said, and got his feet back under him while Trevor turned an interesting shade of red. Adrian’s eyes caught on where the blush spread down his throat, over his pulse…someday, maybe, he’d see how amenable Trevor was to biting. He’d felt the man under him the first time they fought, after all. Trevor obviously wasn’t averse to a little danger.

“Like I—there’s no—” Trevor sputtered while Adrian straightened his clothes. Sypha’s hands came up to fix his collar.

“No one is getting deflowered in an old vampire hideout today,” she said firmly.

“Who said anything about _deflowering_?” Trevor protested, and Adrian quirked an eyebrow. Trevor turned, if possible, redder.

“My back hurts and I want to go somewhere with a _bed._ ” Her stomach growled. Without missing a beat she added, “And whoever gets me breakfast in bed first gets his dick sucked.”

“Well in _that_ case,” Adrian drawled. He bent to kiss her cheek, and Sypha obligingly turned to peck him on the mouth instead.

The walk home passed in a blur of teasing and kissing (and occasional groping). Every few yards Adrian looked at them and found his thoughts stuttering to a halt. He hadn’t let himself think about this for so long, and now it was _happening_. Then Trevor used one of his odd (and hilarious, though Adrian would never tell him) turns of phrase, or Sypha bumped him with her shoulder, and Adrian fell once again into their orbit.

Once they reached the castle things sped up considerably. Sypha grabbed Adrian by the collar and slammed him against the door as soon as he locked it behind them. Despite Sypha’s original protests they didn’t make it to a bedroom for the first time; they barely made it up the first set of stairs. Then the kitchen, where Adrian definitely just planned to get something for them to eat before Trevor backed him into the counter. And then finally, some time later, they actually made it to Trevor and Sypha’s room.

Afterwards, they rolled apart on the bed—Adrian felt too sweaty and overheated, and from the looks of it Trevor and Sypha were too. Trevor buried his face in a pillow and laughed to himself.

“What?” Adrian asked, just to hear him say it.

“Just—this is good, right?”

“I’ve had better.”

Trevor threw the pillow at him. “You’re so full of shit.”

Instead of arguing, he turned to Sypha where she lay sprawled on his other side. “I’m curious, though. Of course things worked out today, but—what was your plan for seducing me, if Trevor hadn’t said anything last night?” They’d gone weeks without making their intentions clear, after all. Adrian had picked up hints, of course, things he had intentionally brushed off at the time, but nothing blatant.

“Hmm,” said Sypha. “Well, we thought about just showing up in your bedroom complaining about nightmares or something.”

Adrian snorted. “Subtle.”

She lightly slapped his arm. If it had actually hurt Adrian might have complained about Trevor being the only masochist in this bed, but that would have also been a lie. “You weren’t picking up on subtle! You were too busy brooding!” Sypha scowled. “We should have just jumped you the first night. Saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Trevor laughed, rolling into Adrian’s side. “Or he should have jumped us months ago.”

Adrian tried to smile. Much as he resented the intervening months apart, he couldn’t regret his original decision to stay. At first he _had_ needed that time in his family’s house; better to bury them as best as he could than try to bury the memories and move on. He’d carried the knowledge of his mother’s death for a year without giving himself time to mourn. Adrian couldn’t have done it again.

He couldn’t quite forgive Trevor and Sypha for leaving just like that, either; but now was not the time for airing grievances.

“I wasn’t in the right state of mind months ago,” Adrian said. He knew that Trevor and Sypha could only think of his father’s death as a moment of triumph. Dracula had been a killer for centuries before he met Lisa of Lupu. Adrian had still loved him, still felt the world was poorer for his absence.

“Well—yeah,” Trevor said. He squeezed Adrian’s elbow. An awkward apology, but it would still do.

Then Sypha gasped, her hands going to her stomach, and Adrian and Trevor both sat up. “What is it?” snapped Adrian, at the same moment Trevor asked, “ _Now?_ ”

“No,” she said hurriedly, “no, no, no. They just have hiccups, it startled me.”

“Oh thank god,” said Trevor, flopping back down on the bed.

Adrian ignored him. His eyes stayed on Sypha, instead, where she absently traced the path of her stretch marks. After a moment she noticed his gaze. “They’re still going. Do you want to feel?” she asked.

He’d felt the baby kick before during their storeroom raids and one of his attempts at a doctor’s examination; hiccups couldn’t be that different. Adrian let Sypha position his hand on the side of her abdomen. After a moment he noticed it too—a light, rhythmic pulse under his fingertips.

“What’s their family name going to be?” he asked. Since Trevor and Sypha could hardly be married in the eyes of the church, technically he supposed the child would be a bastard.

“Belbelepes,” said Trevor.

“Gesundheit,” said Adrian.

“No, it’s going to be their name. Nugget Belbelepes. They get it from all three of us.”

Sypha stared into the distance for a long moment, considering this. Then she grabbed a pillow and dropped it over Trevor’s face. “You’re not their father anymore. Adrian, I’m counting on you.”

“Oh good,” said Adrian, straight-faced. “Telnades sounds much better, don’t you think?”

At that Sypha rolled out of bed, stretching her arms over her shoulders, and Adrian found his eyes catching. It was really too bad she was walking away, just as realized he had enough energy for another round. She patted her stomach as she stalked to the bathroom and announced, “We’re on our own, Nugget! It will be hard, but the Belnades family is a strong line—”

Adrian grinned to himself, and hoped his family never stopped being ridiculous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND...SCENE.
> 
> thank you so much to everyone who has read or commented or left kudos on this fic. the response really blew me away--it was far beyond anything i expected, and kept me going when i would usually consign a WIP to the depths of my "dead forever" folder. i'm glad this is done (it's only my second finished multichap that isn't a oneshot collection!) and have already started planning out a couple more fics in this 'verse. probably no more multichapters, but there will definitely be time travel. possibly a nugget. or two. and maybe some feelings. idk if y'all have picked up on this but i enjoy complex unresolved feelings even in happy relationships.
> 
> and if you want, come say hi on tumblr (@thiefofeddis) pfio (coraxes) or twitter (@knifecatjpg)!


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